Rios stopped Alvarado at 1:57 of the seventh round on Oct. 13 in Carson, Calif., in a staggeringly brutal fight. At the time, I called it the best fight I'd seen since 2000. I may have to revise that list in light of Juan Manuel Marquez's knockout of Manny Pacquiao on Dec. 8, but Rios-Alvarado I remains a classic.

"When the bell rings, basically this picks up in Round 7," Moretti said. "That's how these guys are."

Top Rank had groomed Rios as a potential opponent for Pacquiao for a year and after Rios stopped Alvarado, it seemed certain that Pacquiao-Rios would occur in April.

"Once Manny lost, and after the kind of fight that was, it made Pacquiao-Marquez 5 a viable fight and a fight that we really needed to make" Moretti said. "And so that left Rios and Alvarado kind of outside there."

A fight with Pacquiao would have meant life-altering money for Rios, who now will have to pick up the pieces and be content with fighting a guy he's always beaten. That would seem to give Alvarado a bit of a boost, but Rios has never been a guy to look ahead too much. Plus, he has to have earned great respect for Alvarado during their first battle, so it's unlikely that he'll look past him.